In the reigns of Charles V. and Charles VI. especially caprice began to play an important part in the dress of women. The “beguins,” or hoods, were changed at first into high heart-shaped head-gear, with two wide wings fastened to the head with wire and bearing a strong resemblance to the sails of a windmill. Next, the heart-shapes having been criticized by the clergy were transformed into “hennins,” the _nec plus ultra_ of fashion, and were of a most prodigious height. Very different from the masculine head-gear bearing the same name was the “cornette” or “hennin” worn by women. This was a kind of two-horned head-dress, with horns about a yard high, which was introduced into France by Isabeau de Bavière, the wife of Charles VI. The “hennins” were made of lawn stiffly starched and kept in shape by fine wire, but were of less exaggerated size. Such a novelty was irresistible; all the ladies eagerly copied the Queen, and vied with each other as to who should wear the most handsome head-gear, “peaked like a steeple,” says Paradin, and the tallest horns. From these horns there hung like flags, crape, fringe, and other materials, falling over the shoulders. Such head-dresses were naturally very expensive, and husbands were loud in complaint. Matrons and maidens alike “went to great excesses, and wore horns marvellously high and large, having great wings on either side, of such width, that when they would enter a door it was impossible for them to pass through it.” The height of the hennins was so great that a small woman looked at a distance like a moving pillar. In mourning, however, the cornette was rolled round the throat and thrown backwards. “Never, perhaps,” observes Viollet-le-Duc, “did extravagance in head-gear reach such a pitch with the fair sex as during those melancholy years from 1400 to 1450; the hair itself formed but a small part of the head-dress; hoods, couvre-chefs, chapels, horns, cornettes, hennins, twists, knots, frémillets, and chains were built up into the most extraordinary edifices.” Yet it was far worse than all this in England, where eccentricity and caprice reached a height never attained at the French court. Confessors in France, and monks especially, added their animadversions to those of grumbling husbands. They considered the “hennin” as an invention of the Evil One, and a deadly warfare against the obnoxious article was soon organized.